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Startup happy hour every Thursday – Hops and Chops

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Hops and Chops

We’ve been doing this for 2-3 months now, so I guess it’s a success — if you’d like to catch up (and escape the office) sometime, pop by Linda’s on Pine St. (on Capitol Hill) — we’re there every Thursday night from 6:30 til ~8:30pm. No real agenda — just bloggers, startuppers, techsters, and investors.

How did we come up with the name Hops and Chops? Really, you need to blame the engineer for that one — sort of… drink some hops, show us your chops… yeah, I know…

Oh, and if you’re into that Twitter think, you can follow Hops and Chops on twitter here:

http://www.twitter.com/hopsandchops

Avvo’s Baiting the Shark(s)

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Last week saw the launch of another stuctured database play, and I love it. This one is Seattle’s Avvo founded by a cadre of Expedia expats — it’s goal is to help consumers by creating an easy way to “Find the Right Lawyer” for their needs. They do this primarily by gathering a bunch of information including (a) years licensed to practice, (b) infractions, if any (c) reviews from peers and customers and other bunches of information. They then use this, in a black-box style, to generate a ‘rating’ (ala Zillow’s oft-discussed Zestimate)

So… who wouldn’t like such a wealth of information, you ask? Hmmm… let’s think about that one… hmmm… I’m just stumped. Wait… wait… I have a guess… maybe “Lawyers with Dubious Pasts, Alex?” Bingo, you get the prize, fella!

So, within days of launch, Avvo’s being threatened with a Class Action Lawsuit by a John Henry Browne — he’s an attorney with a slightly low Avvo rating — it looks like that’s being influenced by an Admonition from August of 2005 where was scolded for overcharging a client.

Now, there are probably many legitimate reasons for that overcharge, and I can’t believe that any of Mr. Browne’s loyal clients would leave him because of it, if he could explain those reasons. But, I think it’s totally legitimate for this information to be available — else, how can unassuming customers make truly informed decisions? It’s akin to “trusting a car salesman”, isn’t it?

All I can say is, “Go Avvo“, “Go Redfin“, “Go Underdogs!” — keep shaking up those unquestionable practices!

p.s. This lawsuit threat is another example of “there is no bad PR”. Not only is John Henry Browne going to blast his past out for all to see and look like a litigious lawyer (which consumers detest), but it’s going to make Avvo look like the white knight… awesome!

Seattle Startup Open Coffee Club

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Great turnout today at the Seattle Open Coffee Club for startup networking and java juice — really enjoyed hearing about ideas being pursued. Thanks to Judy’s Book CEO Andy Sack for organizing this burgeoning group — Seattle needs more of these types of things!

He ran around planet Earth!

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An older neighbor used to run by our house almost every day — his name is Rupert, and he is extremely pleasant. For the last several months, I’ve noticed that Rupert hasn’t been running by anymore, and honestly, I worried that something bad may have happened. He’d invited me over for beer and chess many times, but I’d always let the busyness of life get in the way — today I was out walking Zach, and decided to stop by.

Well, I needn’t have worried. He was working on his house, as usual, and when I asked him why I hadn’t seen him running in awhile, he said, “Well, David, I accomplished my goal, and so I took some time off from running to get some house projects done.” (see, Rupert also has a habit of always having about 9 different projects in varying states of completion — his wife or children have had to deal with that!).

“So,” I asked, “what goal did you accomplish?”

Rupert responded, “I ran around Earth. I set a goal to run 24,902 miles before I died, so that I could say I ran around our planet. I did it. So, I’m taking a break.”

We talked for awhile longer, and he introduced me to his wife, son, and neighbor — what an interesting fellow. Sort of the Forrest Gump of Capitol Hill in Seattle 🙂

As an aside, we bought some grape plants from his wife at their yard sale last summer (Rupert was at a school reunion in Austria, where he grew up, when we stopped for that), and they’re doing wonderfully — another great story there, in that the seeds for the plants came in Rupert’s pockets when he emigrated from Austria to the United States. So, they’ve traveled quite a ways as well.